Posts by JackElder

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  • Hard News: It is your right and duty to vote,

    I swear I'm not paying Jack, but he's right.

    Hell, am I working pro bono again? That bugger bono never pays up.

    (Jack, please ensure you bare those forearms on Thursday so I can recognise you, 'kay?)

    I'll wear my best t-shirt for you.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

  • Hard News: It is your right and duty to vote,

    Friends don't let friends text drunk.

    But when they do, it ends up at http://textsfromlastnight.com. NSFW.

    Everyone come along to the Wellingtonista awards on Thursday night! It should be a good evening; I'm reliably informed there are many door and spot prizes, I'm sure the mystery musical guest will be interesting, and there's a good sized set from Wellington's premiere klezmer band, the Klezmer Rebs. It'll be good solid dancing music; I've already got the babysitting booked and will be coming in from my suburban lair especially.

    Plus, in the Wellingtonista awards, you can vote for a well-known local weblog in the Wellingtonian Contribution to the Internet category.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

  • Hard News: Let's lynch the liberals!,

    PAS actually does remind me of the better times on, say, soc.culture.new-zealand, for sure.

    Ha, I seem to recall that I met you on soc.culture.new-zealand back in the mid '90s sometime. It's like a Masonic handshake!

    Disclaimer: I am not a Mason.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

  • Up Front: Same as it Ever Was,

    Agree about the "posting dodgy stuff using your real name" worries. I google prospective coworkers - it's how I found that a new hire wrote erotic startrek fanfic, for instance - and I'm aware that my children will probably have a look one day as well. Then again, I don't think that anything that I've done is actually particularly odd or out of left-field; it's just occasionally funny, as these things should be.

    Another anecdote from my past; I may have posted this one before, but it's a personal favourite.

    These days, every hipster worth their skinny jeans has stretched earlobes. But back in the late 90s it was a bit less common. I've had stretched earlobes since about '96, and used to get a few comments. At one point, I was at a friend's housewarming. The house she was renting had a lot of antique agricultural machinery on the walls. At one point in the evening, rather inebriated, I put a cast-iron pulley on a hook through my earlobe. The weight of the hook/pulley distorted my earlobes quite a bit, and a friend of mine got a good photo of the slightly worrying results. As is the way of these things, it was posted on the internet fairly rapidly. And all was well.

    Then a couple of months later I got a phone call from the friend. She'd been casually going through her logs to find who was deeplinking her content, and had found Something Interesting. The conversation went roughly:
    "You know that photo of you with the pulley through your ear? It's being deeplinked by another site."
    "Oh yeah?"
    "Yup. It's, um, a German site."
    "OK...."
    "It's... a special interest German site."
    "Yes..."
    "Actually, it's a gay German piercing fetish website. Is that a problem?"

    And it wasn't. She sent me the URL for the page that I was linked off, I went there and found a number of perfectly charming gentlemen who were very admiring and made a number of lovely comments, and had a wonderful afternoon. Few issues with the translation, but some things are universal.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

  • Hard News: Getting out of the archives,

    One of my proudest moments in my various careers as a civil servant was the time, working for NZ Immigration (as it was then) as a holiday job, someone came into the main office looking a bit lost and said "They've put a US $100 note into their passport with their visa application. I think they're trying to bribe me. Does anyone know what we do when this happens?"

    In that case: assess the case on its merit and send the money back.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

  • Up Front: Same as it Ever Was,

    I'm pretty sure the only surviving copies are in one of those boxes in the cupboard. However, even if I could dig it out and scan it, if you think I'm stupid enough to give you a picture of me naked ...

    Tch - why bother obtaining an actual photo in a world that has Photoshop in it?

    Have you ever heard the term "roue" used without the adjective "ageing"?

    I've never heard the term "roue" used seriously in any context other than cooking, actually. Wait, that's roux, my mistake. Je ne pas passe Francais innit.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

  • Up Front: Same as it Ever Was,

    "Conservative estimates say that the number of street prostitutes in Auckland, New Zealand, has doubled since 2003"

    That one stuck out for me a bit. Yes, of course the conservatives are yelling that we're now knee-deep in prostitutes; meanwhile, members of the reality-based community just aren't seeing it. If anything, the law reform seems to have drastically reduced the number of street prostitutes in favour of (presumably) workers in licensed brothels. I may be misunderstanding what Gold means by "conservative estimate", though.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

  • Speaker: There's a word for that ...,

    Actually, there already is a Crafarms of both the above...

    Filmed in New Zealand, too. Possibly the only film starring both Bruno Lawrence and John Ratzenberger.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

  • Up Front: Same as it Ever Was,

    Modesty forbids me from saying anything other than to ask Nat Torkington about the time he walked into my house, demanded to know "How many goats did you have to sacrifice to make this happen?", and then wrote the evening up for Usenet consumption.

    I shall also keep silent about the evening in question, except to note that I helped carry some of the equipment up the stairs. And to point out that Nat Torkington was very much Not The Subject of Attention.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

  • Up Front: Same as it Ever Was,

    the usage of handcuffs. Or rope. Or any form of bondage, actually.

    At one point when I was living in the Aro Valley, my mate's little brother turned up on our doorstep because he'd been locked into a pair of joke handcuffs and we were the sort of people likely to have spare keys. And lo, we did, and we let him free.

    Another friend-based story: the time one of our mates turned up at the flat wanting help, because he'd failed to take basic precautions before doing something interesting. Specifically, he'd bought a tin of paint-on latex. Upon arriving home, he'd stripped naked and tried painting a pair of latex shorts on himself. Tres sensual, innit. After admiring himself for a while, he realised something. He hadn't shaved prior to painting the latex on. He was fairly hirsute. So he was now wearing a pair of painted-on shorts that included rather a lot of body hair integral to the structure. So, for some reason, he turned up on our front doorstep wanting to know if there was anything we could do to help. We handed him a pair of nail scissors and said good luck. He spent three hours sitting in our bath carefully pulling the latex out from his body a bit, cutting all the hairs; repeat.

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report

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